Densificare altrimenti: norme e condizioni per una trasformazione socialmente sostenibile del patrimonio esistente

The idea of dedicating an issue of the magazine to the relationship between housing and density was born of the observation of recent phenomenon influencing dynamics of growth in the world’s principal cities and metropolises. I am speaking of the trend of developing compact residential models based on the modernist principles of the building-city that places all of the complex relations and dynamics typical of an urban condition in a single building. The intention is to occupy the least amount of land while creating space for the highest number of residents and functions to limit the consumption of land and energy and protect the environment. Any city that considers itself, or aspires to become internationally competitive, now contains projects of this type. Projects designed by the world’s leading architects whose experiments are designed to respond to the “inexorable” and global phenomenon of the progressive rise in the number of people living in large cities (forecasts for 2050 place this value at 70% of the world’s population). Densification is considered the most effective and most environmentally sustainable remedy against the consumption of more land. This phenomenon is affecting numerous communities in different geographic areas of the world whose urban development policies, a response to the pressing demand for new housing, above all in South East Asia, appear to be dictated more by economic and speculative logics than by effective principles of environmental and above all social sustainability. This is demonstrated on the one hand by the preference for vertical development and, on the other hand, by the disappearance of the individual and the sphere of personal emotions; people are reduced to mere users of housing that, be it high-end or low-cost, proposes standardised solutions dictated by market logics that show little interest in the expectations of inhabitants or the research of architects. The selection of projects presented in this issue offers a partial though significant cross section of this trend, focusing on examples of high quality architecture. However, it takes more than the formal exploits, no matter how interesting, of internationally recognised architects, capable of skilfully and inventively overcoming stringent restrictions imposed by the over-concentration of people and things in a single project, to convince us that this is the correct way forward. Thus, despite the attempt to reacquire portions of exterior space by creating vertiginous terraces in a tower in Montpellier (Sou Fujimoto Architects, p. 34), the creation of areas where the community can meet in a dense apartment block in Pune, India (MVRDV, p. 50), the panoramic views offered by a tower in Stockholm (OMA, p. 58) or the elegant and sophisticated sequences of interior-exterior space of high-density low-rise housing in Madrid (Studio MK27 Marcio Kogan, p. 76), numerous questions remain. Questions and issues that introduce a broader and constructive debate on the themes of dwelling and urban densification. Considered today, in the context of the global pandemic, these issues are as actual as ever and cause for further reflection. An initial important consideration is that design research in the field of housing has lost the vitality that, from early Modernism to the late 1970s, framed it within an urban vision supported by significant moments of social redemption and shared values. Once considered at the human scale, it was successively levelled by the growing dominance of private clients that transformed housing into a mere investment, privileging globalised and pre-packaged solutions, often highly attractive though generally not sustainable in terms of human inhabitation.